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Ok, given our previous thread, I would love to hear some comments from you guys about your experiences using off-shore developers.
How have the ones who've used this successfully set this up?
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I've always found that off-site work isn't nearly as productive as actually having someone in the group who can attend meetings, voice their opinion, and get second opinions on coding/design/coffee selection decisions.
It seems it is the rare, exceptional individual who can work with that much independence, and produce anything that truly adds value to the project at hand.
Whadda you think? I'd be really interested in hearing other opinions on this
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I have found that it heavily depends on the individual and somewhat depends on the task at hand.
After weeding out people who have performed poorly , I do not have any trouble finding off-site work.
Once I know the person is able I am willing to give off-site work to them.
The task at hand also needs to be looked at to make sure that it does not require a lot of interaction and has been clearly specified.
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I find that working off-site is actually more productive for me in some cases, but also stagnating in others.
I can setup my work environment exactly as I'd like it (well stocked fridge, deck chair out the back... ) so I can work in a comfortable environment. There are no distractions (other than email and occasional phone calls) so I'm getting more work done in the hours that I have. There is also no transit time, and working late/weekends is no hassle - I can put in an hour or so after dinner and not have to stress about it. I figure that in a typical 8hr day "on-site" I would get maybe 4 solid hours of work done. Off-site, this is easily 6-7.
The downside is that information transfer with co-workers is slowed down immensely. You can get across far more in a 10 min meeting than you can with 10 emails. There is also the home/work separation issue. You are *never* away from work, so the tempation to put in another 10 mins leads to extremely long hours, plus you miss out on fun stuff like work lunches, morning teas, and serious gossip sessions in the photocopier room (or whatever else you'd like to imagine goes on in the photocopier room :P)
From my perspective, if the job suits being offsite, and the worker is focused and disciplined, the employer actually gets far more value for money by having the employee offsite. Hoever, if the job requires a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with specs, consultations, or planning sessions, or the employee is a lazy bum, then offsite can be a very bad option
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I work out of a small office in my home either 3 or 4 days a week. I find that I actually work more and harder when at home than I can at the office. The team uses teleconferencing, and Instant Messenger for communicating through out the day.
In the group I lead (18 of us), everyone works atleast 1 day from home, most 2 days and several of us 3 or 4 days. We develop ASP sales tools for the largest communications company in the world. We all have at least ISDN at home, several have DSL or Cable modems that allow even better access.
We are one of the most productive teams at the company, and have just won an award for outstanding performance. With the right team, and right kind of development, home offices not only work, they can exceed the productivity of the 9-5 drugery of everyday office work
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You *lead* a team of 18 developers spending 4 days a week at home? Pardon me, but you've *got* to be kidding.
How do you do performance reviews? How could you possibly keep everyone focused on the goal?
I've worked at home too, and am intimiately aware of the on-going interruptions, from kids, wives, and friends who know you work at home.
Hey bob, let's go to that new hot-spot for lunch? Aw shucks, let's take an extra 1/2 for lunch, you can make it up later.
There is no question that at home work is less stressful, but unless you work as an individual, and are paid on completion of agreed milestones, IMHO you're on paid holiday.
Just to make this thread turn into a total flame, I'd also wager that *at least* 1/3 of your team is slacking off badly. I'm sorry, it's human nature. Period.
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Whoa, did you have a bad experience or what? Unfortunatly opinions like yours continue to put a damper on home offices. We consistently meet our goals. We have won awards for doing such. Everyone in on the team has a room at their home setup as an office. Of the 18, 7 work from home 1 day a week, 5 two days a week, 4 three days a week, and the rest four days a week. You earn the right to work from home. As you prove yourself, you gain more time at home.
Performance is goal/task driven. You are given a set of goals. If you meet them, then you can continue to work as you do, if you start to miss milestones, then we look to see if you may need to head back into the office. So far in 3 years, none has moved back into the office.
I have 3 kids (15,10,5) and a wife that stays home. Rarely do any of them bother me when I am in the home office. They understand that when in the home office, I am at work. At the same time, I visit my kids school regularly, have lunch with my wife on a daily basis, Go shopping when I want to, run errands during the day, and I am home when my kids get out of school. The insentive to continue to work from home is all that anyone on the team needs to insure that all goals are met.
There are so many bennies for working from home, that we make the added effort to keep it a viable option for the team. It has worked for 3 years now, and there is no end in site. As one proves themselves they can work from home more often. The system works and it works great.
It is not unusual for me to log onto IM at 9pm or so and find several of the team working. The team is tight, we work with each other, We have GREAT communications via, conferencing, and IM. With the connections we use, there is nothing that I can not do from home that I can do in the office. The system works great. If you have had problems with people not being productive when you allow them to work from home, then you have a bigger problem that you might think. It sounds like you have a management problem. If your employees need to be supervised all the time, then that is your problem. It has nothing to do with working from home or not. I would assume that on your team atleast "1/3" of them is unproductive no matter where they are.
As for out team. The system works, we are very productive, and we will continue to work from home because it is the best situation for the company and for the individule.
Period.
You may want to look at management if you can not get a team working like this.
Bo
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Whoa, did you have a bad experience or what? Unfortunately opinions like yours continue to put a damper on home offices. We consistently meet our goals. We have won awards for doing such. Everyone in on the team has a room at their home setup as an office. Of the 18, 7 work from home 1 day a week, 5 two days a week, 4 three days a week, and the rest four days a week. You earn the right to work from home. As you prove yourself, you gain more time at home.
Performance is goal/task driven. You are given a set of goals. If you meet them, then you can continue to work as you do, if you start to miss milestones, then we look to see if you may need to head back into the office. So far in 3 years, none has moved back into the office.
I have 3 kids (15,10,5) and a wife that stays home. Rarely do any of them bother me when I am in the home office. They understand that when in the home office, I am at work. At the same time, I visit my kids school regularly, have lunch with my wife on a daily basis, Go shopping when I want to, run errands during the day, and I am home when my kids get out of school. The incentive to continue to work from home is all that anyone on the team needs to insure that all goals are met.
There are so many bennies for working from home, that we make the added effort to keep it a viable option for the team. It has worked for 3 years now, and there is no end in site. As one proves themselves they can work from home more often. The system works and it works great.
It is not unusual for me to log onto IM at 9pm or so and find several of the team working. The team is tight, we work with each other, we have GREAT communications via, conferencing, and IM. With the connections we use, there is nothing that I can not do from home that I can do in the office. The system works great. If you have had problems with people not being productive when you allow them to work from home, then you have a bigger problem that you might think. It sounds like you have a management problem. If your employees need to be supervised all the time, then that is your problem. It has nothing to do with working from home or not. I would assume that on your team at least "1/3" of them is unproductive no matter where they are.
As for out team. The system works, we are very productive, and we will continue to work from home because it is the best situation for the company and for the individual.
Period.
You may want to look at management if you can not get a team working like this.
Bob
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Bob,
I suppose your approach was fundamentally different than ours. It appears that your team is actually in close physical proximity to the office, and that face-to-face progress reviews happen on a weekly basis.
In our experience, we had some local, some on the same continent, and some 1/2 way around the world. Team projects took an amazing amount of effort to manage this way, despite using IM, telephone, and relatively formal project managment. There were time-zone challenges, language challenges, and to a lesser extent, problems controlling documentation and coding standards. I think in a situation like yours, controlling these variables is much easier.
I guess my "from home" comment should almost be another thread on off-shore, or widely distributed teams.
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Grant,
It sounds like you had a bad experience. I have had working off site fail but it was either due to the fact that the person was not an individual who could handle it or the tasks at hand were poorly defined.
Both issue can be fixed. Certain people just do not do well in this environment, hey some of them don't do well in the office either. The key is knowing the individual. I like what Bob said about meeting goals and earning the right to work off site.
The pooorly designed tasks is something that the lead and management need to hash out and should be fixed whether on site or off site.
I am impressed with Bob being able to lead from home. Personally I am just as productive at home or at work, but I enjoy being at home more. Using IM to keep in touch seems like a perfect solution.
Does anyone else have success stories with working on/leading teams from home
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Jay,
I totally agree that some people can handle it and some can't, and picking the individual is crucial.
I'm not going to say that these efforts were total failures, we've founds some treasures this way. What I do find though is that it's difficult to scale quickly, and from what Bob says it's much more likely to be successful if you've got a solid team with some history that moves from job to job.
I think Bob's group likely started 100% in-office, and as he said "earned the right to work at home."
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Exactly, we all did start off in the office full imte. And over course of many different projects we have come to this state.
We have lost a total of 3 people in 3 years. The most rrecent was a manager who is leaving this week. (Interestingly enough all have gone to the same company)
I completely agree that it is not for everyone. We have some rather strict rules. For example, you must have an office at home, not a corner in the bedroom. You must be on IM when ever you are at your computer so anyone on the team knows exaclty who is where at any time. On the flip side of that coin, you do not have to be at your desk every second from 9-5. I have spent countless hours at the local Barns and Noble, checking out tech books. And the bottom line is do you still get the job done.
Bo
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>>
We have lost a total of 3 people in 3 years. The most rrecent was a manager who is leaving this week. (Interestingly enough all have gone to the same company)
>>
Sounds like you've sprung a leak!
Seriously though that's excellent retention, obviously you've made a very nice home for your people, and because you're productive, you're given interesting work.
I can certainly see how you could maintain a decent work-ethic in the situation you've put together, which as I mentioned is different than my experience.
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You must be on IM when ever you are at your computer so anyone on the team knows exaclty who is where at any time.
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Anyone in your group have IM on their wireless 
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I know plenty of people who are perfectly capable of slacking off badly while their butt is firmly planted on-site in the office.
Professionals do not require constant baby-sitting, and if there are people in your company who do, then perhaps the management who hired them ought to be fired and perhaps also a close look ought to be made at the overall practices of the organization to see why such a thing is going on.
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David,
I must say I've known a few 'slackers' as well. I find they tend to fester in groups.
I also agree that professionals don't require baby-sitting. I do however find 'team' productivity it very tough to maintain without regular face-to-face interaction.
Capable individuals, given a discrete task, and who are 'bought-in' can accomplish amazing things independently, but keeping a distributed team functioning definitely takes the right people I think. I don't think it's for everyone.
I think Bob and his team have put together a very interesting and workable model, and I'm going to keep it in mind in future.
As I mentioned to Bob, I think my comments applied more to off-shore teams than out-of-office teams
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My boss doesn't like the idea of telecommuting, either. He's never articulated his position as well as you, Grant, but I suspect his thinking is similar. Nevertheless, I do all my work at home. Sure, I go into the office at least one day every other week for the useless, time-wasting "face-time" but I don't actually get any work done on those days unless I come home and get cranking.
How is it that I get to work at home? First of all, I'm a contractor, so the rules are completely different. Still, he could cut me loose, and I made that option plainly clear to him when I _told_ him that I would be working from home from now on... that was about 4 months ago.
I also told him that if there was a ghost of a chance of meeting the (in his own words) 'highly compressed' schedule, I would need to work from home because I cannot even afford to lose the three hours total per day (yes) commuting on the road. He grudgingly agreed.
A lot of people will use any excuse to screw off and, obviously, telecommuting would be the big kahuna of boondoggles for them. Management knows this, and fears that these employees will go from 35% capacity to zero in no time and then be beyond successful integration back into the office. And they'd be right - about those people.
Fortunately, not everyone is like that, otherwise no company would succeed. When I say I work a 70 hr week, I mean SEVENTY hours. Not 30% of 70. That means I spend almost all of my waking hours six days a week in front of this machine, NOT doing what I'm doing now.
Since starting at home, I've been doing 50-70 weeks without fail until lately. I waste no time on the road or with eating out. My wife and daughter have to be reminded occasionally if they're encroaching too much but, at this workload, they are frankly the ones getting screwed, not my company.
This week, I completed release 1 (13 month timeline - 2 people) of our app ONE day late and that only because of debilitating backpain I've suffered over the last three weeks that has most likely been brought on by too much time sitting. I'm kneeling as I type this now and it has taken me twenty minutes with standup breaks to write this much. So, I HAVE been running at 30% for the last three weeks 'cause I TRY to work 60-70 but my back doesn't allow it. But I think that is better than ZERO because, if I were compelled to come into the office, I would have been on unpaid leave the last 3 weeks, a no-win situation, wouldn't you agree?
The app went to be pressed on CD today ON SCHEDULE. The consequences? The master couldn't sit on my boss' desk for a whole day doing nothing but being a trophy or some such. I, who actually made a harsh delivery date through the most difficult obstacle I've yet faced as a programmer - THE INABILITY TO SIT FOR MORE THAN 10 MINUTES - will end up convincing him of the merit of nothing, probably. No doubt he thinks the back pain is an excuse
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Brad,
Well done!
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and fears that these employees will go from 35% capacity to zero
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I laughed the *entire* way through your post.
Sounds like you have a deep love for your boss
I think the formula is the key: accountability, independence, upstanding individual. If all these things jive, then I think you've got it.
IMHO, Bob, brad, you guys are fine examples of how things should work. I think that a team that considers something like this should expect a BAD experience unless they take specific steps to select for the right individuals
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Right on. The circumstance and the individuals make all the difference. I get to design EVERYTHING... there are only a few key individuals for me to deal with for requirements gathering and most of them are already somewhere else in the country... I interface with only one other developer. I don't know how successful I'd be with this approach under widely differing circumstances.
As for my boss, I rate him the best of any I've had so far. Really!(And I could say such things?)
I have tremendous freedom and flexibility. He only rides me, and not too hard, about 2-3 times a year. I am very happy - almost 5 years at the same place, renewed quarterly - something must be good about the chemistry. He just has this thing against telecommuting that he simply couldn't enforce with me but he'll not budge for his other 'real' staff. It is a good thing my colleague seems not to be resentful over our differing status.
Oh well. Cheers! Carry on
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will the "Work at home, submit at office" culture
become an accepted practise of the future,
it will sure be nice for developers and
for companies too as long as it
works.
i just wait for such days. It may really give maximum productivity
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I think the best way to limit travel time, and simplify life is simply to live at the office:
+ minimizes commute
+ all the computer hardware you'd ever need
+ vending machines are much faster than take-out
+ training room has a great 100" TV
+ you get to meet interesting new people when the cleaning staff comes in
+ excellent Internet connection!
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Well, I don't know your place but in my country it is illegal to live in the office :
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